"My Business Users are Ecstatic" As a large global organization with technical research teams located worldwide, ensuring each of the research teams were aware of what data was available for them to leverage was a difficult task. Even if the user knew where the information was located, finding the required data in the repository often proved to be a challenge. Longitude gave us the ability to easily customize our search experience to better meet the user expectation.
Review by Roger Gimblet on SharePointReviews.com "We are Very Happy Customers" Longitude definitely adds a lot of value to search and I couldn't imagine using search without it now. The search previews generated gives you quick insight into whether the related document is relevant to your search. The search term highlighting is a nice feature as well. Being able to jump quickly to the relevant page is a nice feature. The interface is very nice, intuitive and performs well. The relevancy ranking algorithm is a nice feature as well. We are very happy with the product.
Review by Hao Ngo on from SharePointReviews.com"Users rave about the ability edit properties and go to file location from search results. SharePoint Administrators find the tool easy to install and configure." As a global organization implementing a standard compliant document and record management solution for a variety of client teams it was important that we provided client teams with a consistent and superior search experience to accommodate different teams and department taxonomies. The search experience would need to provide value to the organization as it changed from a traditional network share file storage to SharePoint. Additionally, the Search Product needed to have the flexibility change properties users would be able to do faceted search as our business changed without endless customizations and regression testing. We find that the using Longitude Webparts, cuts down on our configuration, testing and deployment time. [Product offers] great faceted search - it provides the ability for the users to more easily broaden or narrow search results. Previews of documents are a great feature.
Review by Carol Corneby SharePointReviews.com"By far the preview feature of documents has put this product above and beyond all the others out there for searching" This product is above and beyond the standard search for MOSS in many ways. The results and preview functionality make it a top end product to use and you can quickly navigate and browse documents to find what you're looking for. The taxonomy and customization of Longitude are excellent, and users can really drill down to narrow a search without going through pages and pages of search results. The tech support for this product is excellent. If you have a problem you're getting a response sometimes immediately and always within the day. By far the preview feature of documents has put this product above and beyond all the others out there for searching. We researched a number of other products and this one hits the mark not only on functionality but on price. They have an excellent sales team and are very easy to work with.
Review by Amber on SharePointReviews.com"BA Insight Longitude allowed us to dramatically extend the functionality of OOTB SharePoint search without the need to replace the search engine with a far more complex and expensive product" As a law firm that works with long legal documents, often in PDF format, we wanted a way to improve the functionality of SharePoint search results. While SharePoint's search engine is fast, the need to click on a result and wait for the file to open before seeing it was burdensome to our users.
Longitude solved this problem elegantly. The preview files come up instantly in the browser and you can jump right to the relevant page from the Longitude search results. So let's say that in a 100 page legal brief, the key term you are looking for is on pages 10, 45 and 90. Now, with three quick clicks the attorneys can jump to those pages and see them in the preview before deciding to open the document - shaving many seconds of time off the process.
With regular SharePoint, you'd have to open the document (which can take a while if the file is large), then use the search feature in Word or Acrobat to try and find the term again - a slow process that is not nearly as intuitive.
Longitude also provides an excellent faceted search feature as part of its UI that is well designed and customizable.
Another neat feature is that when a certain document is looked at frequently, Longitude tracks this in its database and adds stars to it, increasing the document's relevance. This feature tells users that this document has been looked at or downloaded by other users.
The company was very responsive and worked closely with us to ensure that our questions were met. Customer service has been excellent. BA Insight Longitude allowed us to dramatically extend the functionality of OOTB SharePoint search without the need to replace the search engine with a far more complex and expensive product.
Review by Guy Wiggins, Kelley Drye